From Emmy® nominees Chuck Lorre (Two and a Half Men, Dharma & Greg, Cybill, Grace Under Fire) & Bill Prady (Dharma & Greg) comes The Big Bang Theory. Leonard (Galecki) and Sheldon (Parsons) are brilliant physicists, the kind of “beautiful minds” that understand how the universe works. But none of that genius helps them interact with people – especially women. All this changes when a free-spirited beauty named Penny (Cuoco) moves in next door. Sheldon, Leonard’s roommate, is quite content spending his nights playing Klingon Boggle with their socially dysfunctional friends, fellow Caltech scientists Howard Wolowitz (Helberg) and Rajesh Koothrappali (Nayyar). Leonard, however, sees in Penny a whole new universe of possibilities … including love.The third season of the wonderfully smart and silly comedy The Big Bang Theory is even better than the first two. When Sheldon, Leonard, Howard, and Raj–the show’s quartet of supreme geeks–return from their research expedition in the Ar

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This review is from: The Big Bang Theory: The Complete Third Season (DVD)

When I saw the premiere of this show, I laughed hysterically but thought, will it appeal to a broad audience? Clearly, it has. As time has gone on, the character development has been great, and the writing is consistently good. As a professional physicist, I am also intrigued by the accuracy of the science. I have recommended the show to many non-scientists, and most have become hooked. It is great to have the DVD with commercial-free episodes.

This review is from: The Big Bang Theory: The Complete Third Season (DVD)

In the cult tradition of SPARTACUS, the halls of every science department now echoes: “I AM SHELDON”!

Well into its third season, THE BIG BANG THEORY proved to be one of the most funny TV sitcoms ever aired. I had not laughed out loud this hard ever since the best days of FRASIER and SEINFELD – and BIG BANG is consistently brilliant!

Sheldon Cooper is unavoidably the king of the show – the massive black hole this Universe revolves around if you will. A child prodigy, now a 24 years old theoretical physicist PhD with absolutely no social skills or known sexual drive. Sheldon may be on the verge of unifying the fields but cannot drive a car to save his life or break a smile even remotely resembling that of a mere homo sapiens.
Best SEASON 3 moment (a very hard choice to make): attempting to condition Penny using positive reinforcement (chocolates) – but was also open to “mild electric-shocks with almost imperceptible tissue damage” to have her ready by dinner-time.

Leonard Hofstadter is Sheldon’s roommate and primary …keeper. An experimental physicist himself, he juggles Sheldon’s idiosyncrasies with his personal neurosis – not to mention his crush on his neighbor Penny.
Best SEASON 3 moment: getting high on hash-cookies while on an asteroid-gazing camp-trip and rambling that he ‘d rather have a different name as Leonard sounds like having “nerd” in it.

Howard Wolowitz is the only one with no PhD yet (and Sheldon never lets him forget it). An electrical engineer whose crowning achievement is a mechanized arm that is used in the space shuttle (and is now working on its liquid waste management solutions). The fact that he is a short man with a severely outdated and misguided sense of fashion, still lives with his mother, insists on using a collection of pickup lines straight from men’s magazines advice columns – and yet carries himself as God’s gift to women is just hilarious.
Best SEASON 3 moment: turning into Gothowitz by use of fake tattoo-sleeves to pick up “easy morbid Goth girls”.

Rajesh Koothrappali is a particle astrophysicist with a fashion sense close to absolute zero and a severe case of shyness – to the point that he cannot speak in front of women unless inebriated. He keeps using the “poor Indian” defense although his father is a rich doctor who drives a Bentley.
Best SEASON 3 moment: wearing a T-shirt with a small speaker and a large selection of sound-effects, he uses it brilliantly to dramatize his answers. HOWARD: “But Sheldon, you ARE guilty”. RAJEH: “[playing the Law & Order Doom-DOOM]!”

Finally, Penny. She is the proverbial good girl next door who came to California with stardom aspirations but so far works as waitress and suffers a sequence of bad boyfriends – and from her neighbors.
Best SEASON 3 moment: waiting at the hospital with Sheldon taking her medical history. “Migraines?” “Well, I’m getting one now!”

The show unavoidably makes use of previous sitcom combinations (the odd couple, the unfulfilled love-interest mismatch) but even if one manages to discern them they are used in such a fresh manner that all that is left is great entertainment!

The way to truly enjoy this is to own it on DVD. The writing is so smart and the jokes fly so fast (many of them non-verbal) there is just no way to savor it during its weekly air time. Well, may be Sheldon could but then again, who can compare his intellect with his?